Before new chapters of life, new breakthroughs, new sources of joy, new careers, new relationships and new paths of all shapes and sizes, these are almost always preceded by their corresponding opposites.

Something has a sense of humor. Something has an incredible sense of timing.

Something wants you to know that you are not alone in the journey and, especially, travails of your life.

In so many ways, it is like we have not left the womb. Constantly we are being held and nurtured—to such an extraordinary and all-encompassing way, we can’t even see it half the time, and might even deny it during particularly difficult times.

Experiencing the panic of uncertainty and the sudden emerging of a needed answer changes the game entirely.

We get tuned into the magic of creation and, while the experience may increase our overall faith that we will be provided for, more importantly, it encourages us to surrender.

To surrender means to give up our sense of doership because we know that we are held and provided for now, and nothing we do or don’t do will ever change that.

The more awake and aware we become, the more we realize or understand that we are not the choreographers of our lives.

The less awake and aware we become, the more we believe that we alone determine the outcome of our lives.

In other words, with greater consciousness, sense of “I” becomes weak. With lesser consciousness, sense of “I” becomes strong.

It can be maddening. To feel as if our hard work is creating less independent agency. To watch, especially, circumstances continually — it seems — conspire against us, out of our control.

Training wheels on a bike help children learn how to ride without them and are removed when the parent determines the child is ready to free wheel it. Through restriction, training wheels create stability in the environment in order for understanding and confidence to be inwardly generated. In this way, they are like any kind of incubator.

Paths of self-realization and spiritual practice are no different—even in the most advanced, refined phases.

They are restrictive in nature and enable you to focus your concentration on the task at hand. The task at hand? Total and permanent liberation from the see-saw of duality. Happy/sad. Birth/death. Good times/Bad times. Etc.

That is no small task and requires the utmost patience to bear the innumerable lessons that must be learned and internalized before it is determined that you are ready for the final step.

What appears as the loss of agency is preparation for the highest agency that there is.